Initiatives

In addition to “Growth in Transition”, there are several notable international initiatives, which are be presented in brief.

Beyond GDP: The Beyond GDP initiative is about developing indicators that are as clear and appealing as GDP, but more inclusive of environmental and social aspects of progress. This website aims to promote sharing of information on recent developments and ongoing work at European and national level to develop indicators to assess overall societal progress in its social, economic, and environmental dimensions.

Stiglitz-Kommission/CMEPSP (F): The Commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress has been created at the beginning of 2008 on French government’s initiative. Increasing concerns have been raised since a long time about the adequacy of current measures of economic performance, in particular those based on GDP figures. Moreover, there are broader concerns about the relevance of these figures as measures of societal well-being, as well as measures of economic, environmental, and social sustainability.

OECD Measuring Progress: The economic growth leading up to the crisis was in many cases accompanied by growing inequalities in society. For almost 10 years, focusing on people’s well-being and societal progress, the OECD has been looking not only at the functioning of the economic system but also at the diverse experiences and living conditions of people and households. Measuring well-being and progress remains a key priority for the OECD through research, regional conferences and the OECD World Forum on “Statistics, Knowledge and Policies”.

UK-Wellbeing: The Office for National Statistics (UK) is developing new measures of national well-being. The aim is that these new measures will cover the quality of life of people in the UK, environmental and sustainability issues, as well as the economic performance of the country. To develop better measures of the nation’s well-being we asked people what matters most in their lives and what is important for measuring the nation’s well-being.

De-growth: (french: Décroissance) De-growth constitutes a stage toward a sustainable, just, ecologically lasting, democratic, participative, responsive to human needs, localised, everywhere culturally, ecologically and ethnically diverse, global, open society – whose capacity of appropriation of natural resources is stabilized on a viable level which allows their renewal. This sustainable society constitutes a “realizable, renewable, constantly renewing Utopia”, whose specific characteristics are readjusted repeatedly.

Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy/CASSE: A steady state economy is an economy with stable or mildly fluctuating size. The term typically refers to a national economy, but it can also be applied to a local, regional, or global economy. An economy can reach a steady state after a period of growth or after a period of downsizing or degrowth. To be sustainable, a steady state economy may not exceed ecological limits.

DegrowthPedia (beta): There is no one unique definition for degrowth. In reality, there are as many definitions as they are different standpoints. DegrowthPediabeta is a new collaborative platform for information and education about degrowth.